First Place
by buddypumpkin
Summary: Kyoya has always been first place in his class at Ouran, and if he wants to inherit the Otori family businesses, he must keep it that way. Haruhi has to maintain first place in her class, in order to keep her scholarship. What if they were actually in the same class, and were rivals? Story begins in their first year of high school.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Kyoya Otori sat at his desk in his room, typing away at his laptop. School didn't start back up again until next week, so he was taking the opportunity to polish up his business plan. The new club they were starting had been Tamaki's idea, but Kyoya knew his friend would let him have his way about the financial side of the club, especially since Kyoya was investing most of the money for their initial expenses himself. He had to come up with a way for the club to return his investment, and then be self-supporting, at the very least. He was never one to stop at "the very least," however. With a good start, good publicity, and a solid investment portfolio, who knew what he could achieve? He had big plans for the new Ouran High School Host Club.

A soft knock came at his door. "Enter," he called, without looking up.

One of the interchangeable maids working for his family came in, carrying a small tray. "A letter arrived for you, sir," she said, holding it out to him.

The envelope bore the seal of Ouran Academy. He took the envelope off the tray, and nodded in dismissal. The maid backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

He opened his letter, and as he'd expected, it was a short missive informing him of his class assignment for the new school year, which began next week. Without bothering to read it, his eyes scanned down to the bottom of the letter, where he saw what he expected to see: 1A. Ouran divided its students into classes by rank. The top students in each year would all be in the A class, and Kyoya Otori would always be at the top of his class.

He threw the letter onto his desk, and returned to his laptop. He typed a few sentences, and then hesitated. His class rank had been on the letter too, right? Surely it hadn't said...? He snatched it back up, and scanned to the bottom again. It read:

Class Assignment: 1-A

Class Rank: 2

He stared at the offending number for a solid minute. Class rank 2? He had never been anything other than first in his class, and he knew everyone who was rising from the middle school to the high school with him. Surely none of them could have beaten him on the entrance exam? It seemed unthinkable. Unless...

He snatched up his cell phone, and dialed his best friend's number.

"Mon ami!" Tamaki Suoh shrieked into his ear when he answered. "I have been desolate without you! Have you come up with some more ideas for our new club?"

"I'm working on some things," Kyoya evaded. "I was calling to ask...did you get your class assignment letter from Ouran yet?"

"Oh no, did you hear of my disgrace already?" Tamaki sobbed dramatically. "My father tells me my grandmother is so angry that I'm not allowed in her presence until I regain my position."

 _So it wasn't Tamaki_. Kyoya was even more lost than he'd been before. "What do you mean, Tamaki?"

"I lost a rank! I am no longer number 2 in our class; I've been plummeted to _lowly_ number 3. And get this: the person who beat me is a new scholarship student. A real, live commoner! My father told me briefly about it yesterday. Grandmother never minded my losing to you, but losing to a commoner? She's out for blood! For some reason, Father doesn't seem upset about it. He even says he's going to try and talk Grandmother down, but you know how she is."

"A commoner?" Kyoya asked. "Well, he might be a commoner, but I doubt he's ordinary. Did your father tell you that this commoner beat my entrance exam score, too?"

" _ **WHAT**_?!" Tamaki shouted so loudly, Kyoya had to hold phone away from his ear. "Mon ami! How could that happen?"

Kyoya ignored the question. "Did your father happen to tell you the commoner's name?"

"It's Fujioka. Haruhi Fujioka. Father didn't really say much about him, but I could ask if you want?"

"The name is enough. Thank you."

"Now about the host club, I had a few more ideas. How do you feel about special cosplay days? Just think: we could be princes and knights, or samurai, or maybe even..."

Kyoya settled in for at least half an hour of his friend's enthusiastic meanderings, listening with only half an ear. As the third son in a family of exceptional people, he knew he would have to be better than exceptional to gain his father's attention and respect. All his life, Kyoya had settled for nothing other than perfection. Now, for the first time, he found his record blemished.

He would never let it happen again.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A few internet searches, a few phone calls to the right people, and the thing was done. It had been simplicity itself to find out just who Haruhi Fujioka was.

For one thing, "he" had turned out to be a girl. Kyoya looked at her student ID picture, which had accompanied a file of her academic records he'd wheedled out of an administrator at her middle school. She had long, straight hair, and a fringe of bangs. She was cute, if you liked the enormous-eyed, innocent-looking type. He'd exchanged emails with a few of her former classmates, and found out that she had been well-liked by everyone, without having had very many close friends. He supposed she must have been too focused on her studies to spend time socializing with her peers. Apparently, she'd left a swathe of broken hearts in her wake, too; several people had told him that scarcely a week passed between professions of love, but she turned them all down. Of course, if she had set her sights on Ouran High School, perhaps she was aiming for a richer prize than the boys at her commoner middle school. The thought brought the ghost of a smirk to his lips and an evil glint to his eyes. If that were the case, she'd be in for a rude awakening. He knew of very few Ouran families that would look favorably upon their sons dating a commoner, and even the lowest ranking Ouran students would balk at adding a commoner to the family register.

His mind wandered back to the host club he'd agreed to start with Tamaki in the coming weeks. Kyoya already knew more than he'd ever wanted to know about ambitious young women, and the lengths to which they'd go in order to try and secure themselves a rich boyfriend. Mostly, they left him alone; his frosty and forbidding stare could wilt the most ardent attempts at flirtation. But he'd watched the way the girls fawned over the other boys from rich families, and wondered how those frivolous-minded girls expected anyone to ever take them seriously. Now, thanks to Tamaki's persuasion, he wasn't only going to stop avoiding those girls, he was going to start flirting right back at them. He rarely ever indulged himself in such a mundane emotion as self-doubt, but he wondered, briefly, if he knew what he was getting himself into.

Well, all new business ventures came with risk, after all.

This school year was going to be one full of firsts for him. First real friends, first club, first business venture outside the Otori umbrella. He found his gaze settling back on the picture of Haruhi Fujioka, staring back at him from his laptop screen, and he glared at her. _First academic rival_. He closed the computer, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose in an irritated gesture, but his scowl melted away a moment later. High school hadn't started out exactly as he'd planned and expected it to. But at least it was going to be interesting.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Author's note: I've always found Kyoya to be the most interesting character in Ouran Host Club, and since I've read nearly everything this site has to offer that features him as a main character, I decided it was finally time to give writing about him a go. I haven't decided if this is going to have a romantic relationship or not, but if it does, it will almost certainly be Kyoya/Haruhi. Definitely not Tamaki/Haruhi. I've never thought Tamaki was just right for Haruhi; I think I might actually have him as a distant fourth, compared with the other host club guys, for best matches for Haruhi. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed what I threw together, and I expect to have another chapter up in a week.

Oh, and because I'm sure I'd only butcher them, I'm going to skip trying the Japanese honorifics. Sorry to any this offends!


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The first day of school

Kyoya Otori closed the door of class 1-A behind him, precisely as the morning bell sounded the beginning of the first day of school. All the other desks in the classroom were full, save the one in the back of the center row behind his best friend, Tamaki Suoh. Kyoya shot his friend a quelling glare, but either he hadn't quite gotten it right, or Tamaki was immune. The blond young man jumped out of his seat, waving and yelling, "KYOYA! I saved you a seat!" the moment he'd started down the row.

"Suoh, be seated and be quiet!" came the stern voice of their homeroom teacher, whose entrance must have immediately followed Kyoya's.

Tamaki bowed, a sheepish smile on his face. "My apologies, Mr. Hamada."

The elderly man grunted, and pulled a paper out of the briefcase he was carrying. He began the morning roll call.

Tamaki turned his head sideways. "Check out the new guy!" he whispered under his breath. "Poor guy sticks out like a sore thumb!"

It took only a moment for Kyoya to see what Tamaki meant. In the back of the row of seats closest to the windows, sat a scrubby boy Kyoya had never seen before. He had short, choppy brown hair that looked as if it had been cut all by guess, and a pair of large glasses covering most of his face. He wore a huge purple sweater that was at least two sizes too big for him over a white collared shirt, and...were those ugly pants faded chinos, or jeans? Did someone actually dress like this at Ouran Academy?

"Fujioka?" Mr. Hamada said.

The disheveled boy raised a hand. "Here," he said.

Kyoya felt his brows furrow incredulously, and made himself look away. In his mind, he saw the photo of Haruhi Fujioka, the doe-eyed girl from his research. He tried to superimpose it on the trashy kid sitting two seats away from him, and he just couldn't get it to work. And...was she trying to look like a boy, with those clothes and that horrid nest of a haircut?

Apparently, he wasn't the only person who was confused.

"Miss...uh...hmm. Uh, Mr. Fujioka. Please see me at the end of homeroom," Mr. Hamada said. Fujioka didn't correct the teacher either way, she just bowed. Kyoya logged this away to be considered later.

The rest of the morning was a whirl of meeting new teachers, of examining new textbooks and course materials, and of hearing class rules and dire warnings about tests, papers, and projects that would be assigned in the months to come. Promptly at noon, the lunch bell rang, and Kyoya joined the throng of his hungry classmates as they filed into the school dining hall.

As they stood in line waiting their turn to order their lunches, Tamaki gabbled at Kyoya in his usual fashion. "...I told him we would need a _big_ refrigerator for the club, because we're going to need to have a lot of storage room for cakes and things for Huni. At least...do cakes go in the refrigerator? Well, either way we're getting a _big_ one. It should have been installed over the break, so we can check it out this afternoon."

Kyoya let his friend run on without comment, grunting his agreement where necessary, or giving curt answers when grunts would not suffice. Tamaki's stream of consciousness continued. "Mrs. Anders wasn't nearly as scary as I imagined she'd be, after all the stories we heard about her in middle school!" Tamaki rattled on as they paid for their lunches. "English isn't my best subject, so I was preparing for the worst! Those compositions we have assigned later in the term don't sound that bad, do they? I'm pretty sure we had worse from Mr. Ren last year!"

The conversation paused for a moment as they walked across Ouran's elegant dining hall to find an empty table. "You know, Kyoya," Tamaki said as they placed their trays down. "You've said six words since we left the classroom. I counted."

Kyoya's wandering mind caught up with the conversation. "Have I?"

Tamaki grinned. "That's eight. Something bothering you?"

"Not at all," Kyoya replied, slapping on his plastic business smile while settling himself into his chair. In reality, he'd been watching the other students, wondering how far the news that he'd been dethroned from his position at the top of his class had spread. He hadn't noticed any diminution of attention from his peers; he had always attracted eyes everywhere he went. But of course, he was an Otori. The name alone branded him as a scion of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Japan. It would earn him at least some attention on its own, but he wanted more than attention from his peers; he wanted respect. He wondered if they knew, and it just hadn't mattered, or if they hadn't found out yet, and it would when they did. He wondered which of those he'd prefer. And he wondered, for the hundredth time since he'd found out about it, how in the world Fujioka had managed to beat his entrance exam score.

Tamaki's violet eyes danced mischievously, but he only shrugged. "If you don't want to tell me, then don't tell me," he said. Then he added, with a dramatic faux-casual air that made Kyoya nearly grind his teeth, "I was _kind_ of hoping I could get the commoner to come sit with us. You know, tell us all about how commoners live! But I guess he must be eating in the classroom."

Kyoya felt his face harden, and Tamaki laughed. "Come on, Kyoya, you'll scare the poor guy to death if he sees you like that!"

Kyoya decided to ignore his friend's comment, and focused on eating his lunch instead.

"Still mad about the entrance exam?" Tamaki smiled, changing his tone from teasing to conciliating. "Well, from what I hear, he won't be around all that long. You know he has to maintain first place in the class to stay, right? It's in the terms of his scholarship. When you beat him at the end of the first semester, he'll get one more semester of probation. If he can't beat you at the end of second term, he has to pay tuition or transfer to another school."

If Tamaki had expected to confound his friend with this information, he was disappointed. Kyoya had learned about the terms of the Ouran scholarship while compiling his file on their new classmate. He wasn't sure whether to take the stipulations of the Ouran scholarship as good news, or bad. "That means Fujioka will be motivated to try and stay on top, then," he mused, frowning.

"I suppose so. But getting one good test score and beating you at all the classes this term are entirely different things. Poor guy doesn't have a chance, mon ami. I feel a little bit sorry for him. Besides, I know what it's like to be the new guy around here. So I'm determined to be his friend, if he'll let me."

Kyoya found that he couldn't share the sentiment, but he was gratified by his friend's faith in him.

Tamaki stood, leaving his empty plate on the table. "I'm going to spend the rest of the lunch hour talking to some of the ladies about opening day at the host club. Under the circumstances, I won't ask you to join me...but do try to cheer up, mon ami. Okay?" He leveled his brightest smile at Kyoya. Kyoya felt one corner of his mouth quirk up in response, and watched the retreating form of his best friend as he walked over to the nearest table full of the young ladies from their class. The girls' conversations lulled, and all their eyes turned to Tamaki. He couldn't hear what his friend was saying, but he could tell it was working. He had them eating out of the palm of his hand. After a moment, Tamaki winked and blew kisses at the girls, some of whom actually swooned, before he moved away to another table to repeat his work.

The rest of their classes passed by quickly. Other than through her garishly out of place commoner attire, Haruhi Fujioka didn't draw any attention to herself at all. When the final bell rang at the end of the afternoon, she gathered her things quickly, and was the first person out of the classroom.

Tamaki, meanwhile, had snatched out his cell phone and quickly typed a text message as soon as classes were over. Kyoya felt his phone vibrate in his pocket a few seconds later. "I've just texted the others to meet us at the club room. Let's hurry down there so we can welcome them when they get there!" Tamaki smiled that irrepressible smile of his, and Kyoya glanced at his cell to read the message. It said, "Music Room 3! Host club: ASSEMBLE! :) :)" Kyoya rolled his eyes, but smiled too. Typical Tamaki.

Tamaki pranced like an impatient puppy while Kyoya finished gathering his things into his bag. Then, together, they hurried through the hallways towards Music Room 3, and the first official meeting of the Ouran Host Club.


End file.
